Singapore’s stock exchange is preparing to launch a takeover of its Australian counterpart to form a A$14 billion (US$13.8 billion) alliance, a report said yesterday.
The Singapore Exchange is expected to announce a US$6 billion takeover bid for the sharemarket operator Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) on Monday, the Australian newspaper said without citing sources.
The ASX could not be contacted yesterday, but ahead of the weekend it requested a two-day trading halt on its shares, saying “a party has recently re-activated discussions with ASX concerning a possible business combination.”
“ASX does not have any information to disclose at this time, but has observed an increase in the ASX share price today,” it said in a statement on Friday.
A tie-up between the Australian and Singapore stock exchanges, which have market capitalizations of some US$6.1 billion and US$7.9 billion respectively, would require government approval.
However, a merger between the Australian and Singapore exchanges would be in line with the global trend toward consolidation between exchanges, former Merrill Lynch Australia chief executive Greg Bundy told the Australian.
“Singapore and Australia are the most progressive of the exchanges in this time zone, they are the market leaders, and it could be they are getting together to pre-empt the involvement of Japan and Hong Kong, both of which have had their issues,” he said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day